The British GENES blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning British Isles ancestral research from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit British GENES if you do so. Should you wish to get in touch, contact me at christopherpaton @ tiscali.co.uk. Happy hunting!

Monday, 25 February 2013

New additions to The Original Record

1809Ordnance Staff
'An Account of the Establishment of the Office of Ordnance, as it stood at Midsummer 1809; with the Names of the Persons holding the several Offices; and the Salaries or Emoluments arising therefrom.' The return is set out in tabular form, on facing pages, giving: office; full name (or occasionally surname and initials); salaries and emoluments by His Majesty's warrant or by order of the Master-General and Board of the Ordnance - with separate columns for salaries by quarter books, by bill and debenture, and gratuities, house rent, coals and candles, stationery allowance, and pay of assistant clerks at the Tower and Pall Mall. There are returns for barrackmasters, clerks, porters, doorkeepers and messengers, senior officers; the gunpowder manufactories at Faversham and Waltham Abbey; the gunpowder magazines at Gravesend and Tilbury, Hyde Park, Keyham Point (near Plymouth), Picket Field (Hungerford), Priddy's Hard (Gosport), Purfleet, Tipner Point (near Portsmouth) and Upnor Castle (near Chatham); the Inland Depot at Weedon Beck; the Office of the Inspector of Artillery; the Royal Carriage Department; the Royal Laboratory; the Royal Military Academy; the Royal Military Repository; the Depots for Small Arms at Brecon, Briston, Bury St Edmunds, Chelmsford, Derby, Horsham, Lincoln and Shrewsbury; the Small Gun Department; and for the local staff at Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Cape of Good Hope, Carlisle, Ceylon, Chatham, Chester and Liverpool, Curacao, Demerara, Dominica, Dover, Gibraltar, Greenwich, Grenada, Guernsey, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Hampton and St James's, Hull, Isle of Man, Jamaica, Jersey, Landguard Fort and Harwich, Malta, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Pendennis Castle, Portsmouth, Quebec, Scarborough Castle, Scilly Island, Scotland, Sheerness, St Christopher, St Croix, St Lucia, St Thomas, St Vincent, Surinam, Tinmouth Castle and Clifford's Fort, Tobago, Trinidad, Windsor, Woolwich and Yarmouth.

1820-1824Vagrants imprisoned in Essex
The return of persons committed under the Vagrant Laws to the Prisons and Houses of Correction in Essex includes lists of vagrants committed to the Houses of Correction at Barking, Chelmsford, Colchester and Saffron Walden, the Borough Gaol at Colchester, and the Gaol of the Liberty of Havering atte Bower. Full names are given, with a brief description of the acts of vagrancy, such as wandering abroad, begging, prostitution, abandoning family, idle and disorderly, &c. January 1820 to January 1824.

1837London, Salisbury, Exeter, Plymouth and Falmouth Railway Shareholders
The return of the railway subscription contracts deposited in the Private Bill Office lists the shareholders in the London, Salisbury, Exeter, Plymouth and Falmouth Railway, subscribers to shares amounting to £1,410,865 towards the £1,700,000 estimated expense of the project. The list gives full name of each subscriber (or surname with initials), residence, addition (occupation), and sum subscribed.

1843Subscribers to Willcolkes and Fryers' Arithmetic
'The United New and Much Admired System of Arithmetic and Mental Calculations, of Doctor Willcolkes and Messrs. T. and T. W. Fryer; Being the Result of Many Years Study. Eighth Edition, Much Enlarged and Carefully Revised' was published in 1843 in Derby. The list of subscribers includes sections for Ashton, Beverley, Boston, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Grantham, Halifax, Heckmondwike, Huddersfield, Hull, Ireland, Leeds, Lincoln, Liverpool, Manchester, Newark, Oldham, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield, Stalybridge, Stamford, Stockport, Wakefield, Warrington, as well as separate lists of bankers and principals of seminaries. More precise addresses are rarely given, christian names hardly ever.

1855Killed and Wounded before Sebastopol
The Adjutant-General's return of British officers and men killed and wounded before Sebastopol in the final days before the fall of the city, 3 to 6 September 1855. The lists of wounded generally specify whether 'slightly', 'severely' or 'dangerously'. Full names are given, with regimental number and rank. There are separate returns for the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 14th, 17th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 28th, 30th, 31st, 31st, 33rd, 34th, 38th, 41st, 46th, 48th, 49th, 55th, 56th, 62nd, 63rd, 68th, 77th, 88th, 89th, 90th, 95th and 97th regiments of Foot, the 1st and 2nd battalions Rifle Brigades, the 1st battalion Coldstream Guards, 1st battalion Scots Fusilier Guards, 3rd battalion Grenadier Guards, the Royal Naval Brigade, and the Royal Sappers and Miners, all of which have been indexed separately.

1890County Court Judgments: England and Wales
Extracts from the Registry of County Courts' Judgments. These judgments were not necessarily for debt. In some cases they were for damages on properly disputed causes of action, but no distinction was made on the Register. Judgments settled otherwise than through the Court may appear, unless 'Satisfaction' was entered up within the fourteen days allowed for that purpose. These printed extracts include occasional notes giving more detail about certain cases, and also list Satisfactions entered on the Register.

Collections of entries for individual surnames from historical records from the British Isles and colonies from the 11th to the 20th centuries, hand indexed and extracted by surname, and available as ebook (£75) or DVD (£90). Each ebook contains the full set of descriptions and matching scans for the particular surname from the 10 million and more records hand indexed by Theoriginalrecord.com. All scans are in PDF format.
www.theoriginalrecord.com/database/ebooks

Each Surname Source Book contains the records relating to the surname in question, gathered from the archives of theoriginalrecord.com as of the time of purchase. These archives contain over 10 million surname-indexed items from the British Isles and the colonies, dating from the time of the first heritable surnames in the 11th century, through to 1958.